Trustworthy Technology

I am from the "Millennial" generation (people born between 1978 and 1998). I am the type of person who prefers to be doing more than one thing at a time (for example, I am currently writing, watching the Olympics, drinking wine, and cuddling the dog). Being from this particular generation also means that I am literate in technology. I can easily learn new things on computers. I can navigate the internet better than my home town. I rely on spell check and I don't even known a dictionary (though there is a possibility that I have one buried in a box, you know, an antique). I text faster than I write, and always have a cell phone within immediate reach (also an ice-scraper, to make my dad and patient's happy). So, it is assumed that I trust technology. This assumption, as always, is wrong.

I completely distrust technology. I am in the sandwich generation of using technology constantly but not totally trusting that it will do the right thing. Those younger than me seem to have no problem turning over their whole worlds to technology. They will happily email their professors final papers, where I would email and then run across campus to make sure that it actually arrived, in complete form, with the correct name and date on it. I have a GPS that I have stopped using because I am convinced that it is out to get me. When I use it, I am completely dependent because I frequently don't know where I am going. But after an excursion in backwoods Maine, where it kept yelling at me to turn onto a road that would have not supported the width and weight of my car, I decided that I had to take matters into my own hands. I am sure that someday all of the GPS's of the world will rise up against humankind and tell us to all drive into oceans. You just wait, it'll happen.

Today was a classic example of me not trusting technology. About a year ago I started to pay my bills on-line. Talk about a risk - sending my money through the cosmos, praying that it would end up paying the right bill. But because I don't really trust the technology, I end up calling and making sure my payments were received. The customers service reps are always polite but gently reminded me that just because there was 'weather' in California were my payment was heading does not mean that it got stuck in some sort of internet highway pile-up. I don't trust it. Recently, I noticed that I hadn't been billed for my cable and internet. I was getting increasingly nervous that I would wake up one day and I couldn't get news and information instantaneously (another characteristic of Millennials.) So, I signed onto the internet and kept paying my bill - over and over and over. I was sure that it was getting lost in the universe and my blood pressure started to get dangerously high. Then, still not trusting the 'system', I called my friendly customer service rep who politely informed me that I had actually built up a CREDIT of $238. And the reason that I hadn't received a bill lately was because I had payed the last one twice, once on-line and then (not trusting) once with a mailed check. And then paid three more times on the internet. Knowing me, I will be calling again next month, just to make sure that money is still safely tucked into a computer system (good thing customer service reps are trained to be counselors, I need emotional reassurance every once and awhile).

I am also now sporting two pagers. I don't trust that the technology will lead the people who need me the most to call the right number. So, I am walking around with two pagers at my waist, looking mightily important, but really, just untrusting.

Someday, I may give into the technology and allow it to lead me. But for now, I feel better calling the ever so polite customer service people, wearing two pagers, and paying my bills more than once. You have to admit, at least I am consistent.

**NOTE: While setting up the above picture, my dear sweet Boomer picked up one of my pagers and ran off. It seems that he too wants to be hooked into the technology of the age.